Legislative Update Week of August 3, 2018

On Wednesday, Senators passed a four-bill spending package, forging ahead in the federal funding process even as the president threatens to wreck it all with a veto-spurred government shutdown tied to border security.

In a 92-6 vote, the Republican-led Senate signed off on a bundle, H.R. 6147 , that includes one quarter of the 12 annual spending bills covering a host of federal agencies. Passed was fiscal 2019 funding for the departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Treasury and HUD, as well as the EPA and IRS.

After canceling all but one week of August recess, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that leaders on both sides of the aisle aim to pass two more of the spending bills — Defense, S. 3159, and Labor-HHS-Education, S. 3158 — by month’s end.

“We hope to be able to conference those bills with the House and send the president a series of conference reports covering those nine of 12 appropriation bills early after we get back from the Labor Day weekend break,” McConnell said Tuesday.

The majority leader did not say, however, what will come of the remaining three measures, which fund the departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice and Commerce, as well as foreign operations and science programs.

The House, too, has yet to pass those three bills or the measure, H.R. 6470, that funds the departments of Education, HHS and Labor. The House is in recess until after Labor Day.

Early this week, Trump tweeted that he would “have no problem doing a shutdown” if he doesn’t get funding for border security and a border wall. Trump has not indicated, either, whether he is willing to veto bills besides the Homeland Security measure or if he would turn down a continuing resolution to keep funding at current levels for all or part of the government.

Despite those unknowns, McConnell indicated Tuesday he is taking the president’s informal threats as an official negotiating stance.

“Most Republicans, including myself, agree that we ought to fund the wall,” McConnell said. “And we’re going to try to achieve that in the course of a regular order process that’s all unfolding before you and hope we don’t get to that position at the end of the fiscal year.”

The majority leader noted that the Senate already laid out $1.6 billion in fiscal 2019 funding for the border wall, as the White House initially requested. For their part, House Republicans have approved $5 billion for the structure.

On Thursday, the Trump administration is proposed to freeze vehicle fuel efficiency standards for model year 2021-2026 cars at 2020 levels.

On Friday, China announced it would hit about $60 billion worth of U.S. exports with new tariffs in response to President Donald Trump’s decision this week to escalate potential trade penalties on Beijing, compounding concern in the business sector that there is no end in sight to the growing conflict. China said it was taking the action “because the U.S. side has repeatedly escalated the situation despite the interests of both enterprises and consumers.”

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 157,000 jobs in July, down from 248,000 added in June. It’s the second straight month of a slowdown in job growth, providing fresh evidence that the economy has reached full employment. However, wage growth remained sluggish at 2.7 percent over the previous year, indicating that the tight labor market and the robust 4.1 percent second-quarter growth in GDP that the Trump administration announced last week still isn’t showing up in paychecks.

Congressional Hearings Next Week

The Senate is out of session next week. The House is out of session until September.